Ryan Lambie wrote:I'm guessing you've already started planning the designs and scales of other monsters in the kaiju movie universe. Is it difficult making a character like, say, Mothra scary to a modern audience?

I can't be specific about who we're introducing. But you might have said the same about Godzilla and King Kong - but with the artists and technology we have today, and the filmmakers' passionate love for these characters, there is something that transcends those initial designs. Whatever the core foundations of those designs are, rendering them with modern artistry, like at ILM with Kong, that becomes less challenging.

The most challenging thing about it is having them feel authentic to the characters we all know. We want Kong to feel like Kong, and that means he should feel like Kong to someone who loves the 1933 version, and someone who loves Peter Jackson's film, and hopefully somebody who likes our film. Even though they're different versions of that character, they see a throughline in him.

Kong: Skull Island is clearly the next step a larger movie universe you're building. So what are the challenges of building that, and do you have one person who's overseeing it all from a top-down perspective?

We have a team within Legendary who are crafting it together, and our next film will be Godzilla: King Of Monsters, which starts shooting in June and comes out in 2019. Look, the most daunting thing is in reintroducing these characters in a new way that also feels authentic to their roots. And again, these are characters that people have loved for generations, so it's taking those foundations and then having them feel fresh and new. That's the biggest challenge. Then it becomes about making, as we said before, the characters' thematic and social resonance - weaving that in with the story. We aspire to make movies that work for audiences now as well as they did for us when we were kids.

Godzilla was largely set in the present, while Kong: Skull Island's set in the 70s. Do you think future films will take a similar approach, where they'll alternate between past and present?

Um... the timeline of Monarch and the universe will allow us to play with some of that. Right now, because Godzilla re-emerges in the 2014 film, that means the world is now aware of monsters. We're pushing forward from there, but there's always the chance that we could take a side trip.

So are Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larsson contracted for any more of these films?

Susan King wrote:It's been 80 years since a giant ape climbed to the top of the Empire State Building and held on to a tiny actress while planes flew over trying to shoot him down.

That scene in the original 1933 "King Kong" is one of the most memorable in cinema history.

"I don't care how old you are, you feel for the poor gorilla and what happened to him," said "Kong" historian John Michlig, who has written for the "Kong Is King" website.

Though there have been sequels and remakes — including Peter Jackson's CGI-driven 2005 hit — none have matched the magic and romance of RKO's original, produced and directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack.

"King Kong" stars Robert Armstrong as Cooper's alter-ego Carl Denham, a brash filmmaker who takes an expedition to the mysterious Skull Island. They find a giant ape there and bring him back to New York in shackles to exploit him as the "Eighth Wonder of the World."

Though Kong can be savage — he's not above chewing the head off a native — the giant gorilla has a soul and is capable of real tenderness when he falls in love with Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), the beautiful blond actress in Denham's film.

"I think people connect to the character for the same reason we go to the zoo to watch the orangutans and chimps — because they're humanoid," said film historian Scott Essman, hosting an 80th-anniversary screening of "King Kong" on March 24 at the Pomona Fox, where the film played in May 1933. "He is not human, but he's human in many ways. He likes the girl. People relate to him."

Thank goodness producer-director-writer Cooper didn't follow through on his initial concept for "King Kong." "His plan was get a gorilla and a bunch of Komodo dragons and just roll the film," said Michlig.

But the master showman changed his plans when he met stop-motion special-effects wizard Willis O'Brien, who created the dinosaurs for 1925's "The Lost World." O'Brien was working at RKO on his project called "Creation," said "Kong" historian Doug Turner, whose late father, George, cowrote the book "The Making of King Kong."

"['Creation'] was a dinosaur epic kind of like 'The Lost World,'" said Turner. "He assembled a crew of effects people for the film and shot a short test reel."

Cooper had been brought to RKO to evaluate projects at the studio because it was spending too much, said Turner. One project Cooper canceled was "Creation."

"But what he found when he looked at Willis O'Brien's work was a way to make a gorilla epic in the studio," he said.

"King Kong," which opened in March 1933 at Radio City Music Hall and the Roxy in New York City, didn't seem destined to be a hit. It was released at the height of the Great Depression, around the time that newly inaugurated President Franklin D. Roosevelt had declared a "bank holiday" and closed the banks.

"So the banks are closed and you are telling people to come out to a movie," said Michlig. "It should have failed, but it set records."

It proved so popular that the sequel "Son of Kong" was released in theaters by year's end.

What makes O'Brien's effects even more remarkable and influential is that the mighty ape was just an 18-inch model made by sculptor Marcel Delgado, who began working with O'Brien on "The Lost World."

Besides the model, said Michlig, "they built a full-sized hand and a full-sized head and shoulders." Michlig noted that Cooper never actually revealed how big Kong was supposed to be. "Merian C. Cooper said, 'King Kong is as big as he's got to be."'

"King Kong" also broke new ground with its use of miniature rear projection, as well as using Linwood Dunn's new optical printer that matted together shots of the models with the actors.

Max Steiner's pulsating score also changed the musical landscape of motion pictures. "Before Max Steiner, music was sort of incidental," said Michlig. "You could pick up music from other sources and drop it in. Sound wasn't that old."

But Steiner's score "was almost Wagnerian," said stop-motion historian and character animator Chris Endicott. "There were motifs that would be repeated. It was quite an achievement."

this should probably be moved to movie discussion considering the movie is out now,

I saw this today and thought it was a bang up flick, really good popcorn fun movie with good performances from a diverse cast with pacing that keeps you engaged and excellent effects, too. Spoilers...

...it is really a movie about John C Reilly's character that just happens to take place on Skull Island where Kong lives. at least that is my take on it. he provides the real heart in the movie and is more of a true hero character than Loki

Well Chrishte anything that stops TheButcher from posting another 'movie news link, that we already would know about as this is not the only movie website there is in the world, that just buries any other potential 'discussion' in another thread'.

Cpt Kirks 2pay wrote:Well Chrishte anything that stops TheButcher from posting another 'movie news link, that we already would know about as this is not the only movie website there is in the world, that just buries any other potential 'discussion' in another thread'.

i enjoyed KONG too. It's a big dumb movie, but a fun one. The humor was actually humorous, the characters were likable and interesting, and the post-Vietnam setting and soundtrack oozed style. Basically, it was everything that Jurassic World should have been. Is it too late to have Jordan Vogt-Roberts direct Episode 9?

Ribbons wrote:i enjoyed KONG too. It's a big dumb movie, but a fun one. The humor was actually humorous, the characters were likable and interesting, and the post-Vietnam setting and soundtrack oozed style. Basically, it was everything that Jurassic World should have been. Is it too late to have Jordan Vogt-Roberts direct Episode 9?

wouldn't it be cool to see Quentin Tarantino do one of these "monster" movies? if you waited until after the credits you saw.................. SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!

the clip that referenced Mothra and Rodan and Godzilla, then it is clear there are more movies coming. I'd love to see Tarantino give one the Kill Bill treatment, drawing from a variety of classic Japanese and other monster movie iconography to make something that is both an homage and its own great movie in its own right

Dave Fuentes wrote:*Not only did Quentin Tarantino site War of the Gargantuas as one of his all-time favorite monster movies, he instructed Darryl Hannah and Uma Thurman’s stunt doubles to study the film’s fight scenes for their epic battle in KILL BILL Vol. 2.

QT ordered the staff to shoot a miniature set of Tokyo like a landscape from the giant monster movie. He even screened a video of Gargantuas to Daryl Hannah because in his mind, Kill Bill is a kind of War of the Blonde Gargantuas.more from imdb.com

Larry Fitzmaurice wrote:War of the Gargantuas: 1966 Ishiro Honda monster film that served as inspiration for the miniature set of Tokyo shot specifically for the film; during the film's genesis, Tarantino specifically screened Gargantuas for Daryl Hannah as well.

here is a thought I had while talking about Kong with the girlfriend after we saw it; I want to see a Kong movie told from the perspective of one of the "natives", with backstory and character arc and everything. I want to know about the history of these people, they are always given short shrift in Kong movies, treated as two dimensional static creatures that just are. what is it like to be a kid growing up in the shadow of Kong? what kind of rite of passage to become a man would people living in such a place have? with the kind of creatures that live on the island the physical prowess of the people must be exceptional, and/or their ability to use their environment to their advantage. and to top it all off I want the relationship with Kong fleshed out, something John c Reilly's character touched on just a bit in this movie. what if the relationship between Kong and humans was legitimately symbiotic? hhmmmmmm

I can get behind that idea. Interestingly, this is the second King Kong movie in a row to explicitly reference Heart of Darkness -- a book which, as we've discussed, has been criticized for its portrayal of Africans and their culture as something backwards and corrupting and not worth examining from their point of view. We've had a handful of Kongs now where the whites travel to Skull Island and realize what a horrible mistake they made and leave, which is perfectly fine, but it DOES make me wonder about the people who actually live there. What is their culture? What are their daily lives like? What is their relationship to these monster-gods who live above them? I think this was Tarantino's pitch for the Godzilla movie he wanted to (and probably never will) make: an up-close look at the humans who have to share their world with him.

Ribbons wrote:i enjoyed KONG too. It's a big dumb movie, but a fun one. The humor was actually humorous, the characters were likable and interesting, and the post-Vietnam setting and soundtrack oozed style. Basically, it was everything that Jurassic World should have been. Is it too late to have Jordan Vogt-Roberts direct Episode 9?

I pretty much felt the same way about this film. There were some parts that were so ridiculous it was funny, it reminded me of the intentional campiness in Gods of Egypt...and it worked. The soundtrack was amazing and fitting for the time.

Is this the beginning of the MonsterVerse? I'm not sure who I would want to win: Kong or Godzilla. Maybe they will just walk off into the sunset, holding hands.

I just finally watched this. I enjoyed the basic story quite a bit.But.....holy shit the dialogue was horrible. Watching a cast of talented actors uttering such expository drivel was like watching the Star Wars prequels all over again.

Achievement Unlocked: TOTAL DOMINATION (Win a Werewolf Game without losing a single player on your team)